Downtime starts out with a mild, asthmatic, trivia-spouting cop rescuing an angry, despondent single mother from a suicide attempt. She lives in a nearly empty, condemned housing project terrorized by a gang straight out of Romper Stomper. When Rob, the cop, returns to ask Chrissy, the mother, for a date, the gang traps them, along with Chrissy's young son, in an elevator from which they must make a harrowing escape.
This is an absolutely terrific movie. It's gripping and charming, funny and tense. It's got the seat-gripping suspense of action flicks like Die Hard or Speed, but it fully develops its characters and convincingly shows the atmosphere of utter despair in which Chrissy lives. Though it reminded me at some points of other movies, it never felt derivative or stale.
The only downside was the three women sitting next to me who, whenever something bad happened (which was pretty frequently), shrieked at the top of their lungs, "OH MY GOD!" You know, somehow I thought that people who would go out of their way to track down a film festival would have enough respect for the movie and for the audience to KEEP THEIR GODDAMN MOUTHS SHUT! Guess not.
The second movie, Doing Time for Patsy Cline, started out promisingly as a quirky little Australian road movie -- my favorite. But I quickly realized it wasn't going anywhere, which is the kiss of death for a road movie. It's the story of Ralph, a naive farmboy who wants to become a country singer and is on his way to Nashville -- from somewhere in the Australian Outback. Hitchhiking to Sydney to catch his flight, he gets a ride from an odd couple, Boyd and Patsy (named for Ms. Cline), and gets thrown in jail when it turns out their car is stolen and full of drugs.
It's pretty confusingly put together as Ralph's time in prison is intercut with scenes of his newfound success in Nashville, which at first seems like a flash-forward, but by the end of the movie is starting to seem more like a Sliding Doors-type dream -- which feels like a cheat because nothing's led up to it. And the characters never change -- they're the same in the last frame as they were in the first. Still, there were some entertaining moments; it'd be worth a video rental.
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